EMBO announces the launch of EMBO Press

Heidelberg, 29 October 2013 – EMBO today announced that it will launch EMBO Press on December 15. EMBO Press is a new publishing platform for The EMBO Journal, EMBO reports, Molecular Systems Biology and EMBO Molecular Medicine that provides opportunities for the future development of the journals.

EMBO Press will strengthen the policies of the EMBO journals to encourage transparency in the publication process and help researchers make better use of scientific data. In addition, The EMBO Journal, EMBO reports, Molecular Systems Biology and EMBO Molecular Medicine are being redesigned to maximize online functionality and access.

The announcement coincides with an expanded publishing agreement with Wiley and a new partnership with HighWire Press of Stanford University that come into immediate effect.

Wiley has published EMBO Molecular Medicine since 2009. As one of the world’s leading publishers of academic content, it will provide invaluable support for editorial production and international marketing of the four EMBO scientific journals.

HighWire Press is at the forefront of digital scholarly publishing. Many leading journals in the life sciences rely on its community-based strengths and its track record for technological support and innovation, including access to third party developers.

“We welcome our publishing partners to support EMBO Press and appreciate the strengths they will bring for the key global markets of our journals, including the United States and Asia Pacific,” said Bernd Pulverer, Head of Scientific Publications at EMBO. “Our individual journals already have strong recognition for quality in the scientific community established over 30 years since the launch of The EMBO Journal and our mandate is to serve the scientific community. EMBO Press will allow us to provide the independence we need to ensure that the EMBO Press portfolio of journals stay at the forefront of technological advances and delivers the best possible service to the research community. In particular, it will allow EMBO to continue our commitment to the principles of transparent, fast and fair publication in the life sciences while maintaining our reputation for selectivity and quality.”

EMBO Press will include enhanced options for publishing source data, and rendering the data presented in figures more usable and discoverable. Researchers will be able to customize and optimize their reader experience. Restructuring the way papers are presented will obviate the need for a separate supplementary information section.

“Many exciting developments lie ahead in publishing and we want to have a platform that supports technological responsiveness and high-level support,” added Pulverer. “Access to the Drupal tools integrated into the HighWire Press Open Platform creates new possibilities for innovation in areas like data presentation, semantic interlinking, article level metrics and mobile web interfaces. There will be many exciting technological developments in the future and we want our authors and readers to be in a position to benefit.”

“After many years of fruitful collaboration with Nature Publishing Group, we have decided to collaborate with Wiley and HighWire to implement the EMBO Press platform. EMBO Press gives us the freedom and flexibility we need to realize our future plans for the journals,” commented Maria Leptin, Director of EMBO. “All the financial benefits from our publishing activities will continue to support the activities of EMBO and the scientific community.”